The Hunger Trace

by Edward Hogan

  ‘Eh up. Mate. Who do you support?’

  ‘Erm. I don’t support anyone at the moment,’ Christopher said. ‘But no one supports me, either. One day I hope to be the man of a house, and support a whole raft of children.’

  The lad squinted in the glare of the reading light, considered the answer for a moment, and then went back to his seat. ‘Nah. Not worth it,’ he said to his friends.

  The buses began to empty at around 3 a.m., and Christopher saw the slow blinks of the driver in the rear-view mirror. He had a wrinkly bald head and low eyes which made his face look upside down. Christopher cleared his throat conspicuously every ten seconds, to keep the driver awake, until, eventually, he fell asleep himself.

  His rest was disturbed by a voice, and when he woke there was an old-style bus conductor standing over him. This would have been fine – he had a valid ticket – but for the fact that the conductor had antlers. ‘Who the, erm, eff are you?’ said Christopher.

  ‘Tickets to Cromm Cruac,’ the conductor said. Christopher handed him his Peak Saver ticket, in which the conductor made a little tear before returning it, and disappearing.

  At 8 a.m., Christopher left the Red Arrow and spotted a bus in Nottingham station with the word ‘Sherwood’ on the display. He had been feeling a little anxious, and wondered if it might be a hallucination, but he got on the bus anyway. He told the bus driver that he was going on a pilgrimage. ‘Just ring the bell when you want to get off,’ she said.

  Sherwood, when he got there, was just a normal urban area, with an average high street on a persistent incline. It had a betting shop, an Indian take-away, a few pubs, and a Co-op. It was cold and wet. The local youngsters must have been thankful for their woolly hats and hoods.

  Christopher bought a tin of tuna and a bread roll from the Spar. ‘Erm. I’m not very impressed with Sherwood, I must say,’ he told the man behind the till.

  ‘It’s an up and coming area, mate.’

  ‘Not many open spaces.’

  ‘There’s a pitch and putt up there, past the pub.’

  ‘Oh right. Erm. Do you know where the forest is, at all?’

  ‘Forest? You mean the football?’

  ‘No. Sherwood Forest.’

  ‘Oh. Where the Holiday Park is, you mean? Few miles from here. Follow the signs for Center Parcs.’

  ‘Oh right.’

  Christopher turned away.

  ‘Nothing is forgotten,’ the man said.

  ‘What?’ said Christopher.

  ‘I didn’t say anything,’ the man said, shaking his head at Christopher.

  Christopher had not bothered following the signs to Center Parcs. He had eaten his lunch on the first tee of the pitch and putt, caught the bus back to Derby, and then a train out to Detton. He had called Adam from the station.

  As he approached Drum Hill now, he kept to the high side of the brook and off the main paths, tracking instead through the trees at the base of the hill. It was a good decision, for the brook had burst, and the wooden footbridge which crossed the water from the field was almost completely submerged. Only the handrails were visible, like the humped backbone of an animal. The fast-moving water was the colour and opacity of old women’s tights.

  Christopher edged along the gap between the brook and the steep rise of the hill until he reached the silver birch, which he used to swing himself towards the entrance to the den. Inside the den was a blanket, a sleeping bag, a torch, and a couple of copies of Asian Bride Magazine, which he had ordered thinking they were something else. Christopher removed his drenched coat, trousers, socks and pants, and dried himself off with the blanket. Then he wrapped it around his waist like a towel, and shuffled to the back of the den with the sleeping bag, where he watched the rain fall in the brook. It made him want to urinate. Shivering, he thought about taking a nap but his father had once told him that if you were stranded in the cold, you should not go to sleep, because your body temperature drops.

  It’s cold out, his father used to say. Especially if you leave it out. (It had taken Christopher a while to get that one.)

  He had a whole host of sayings about the weather.

  It’s so cold, that when I took Monty (their old dog) out for a wee, I had to chop him off a tree trunk. (Christopher found that outrageously funny.)

  Listening at a locked door, Christopher had once overheard his father say, ‘We’ll make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.’ He had asked what it meant a few hours later, but his father had been shocked, and gave a muddled explanation about how brilliant Christopher was, and how nobody should ever tell him different.

  Every path has a puddle. This was apt, right now. Christopher looked at his boot prints leading up to the den. Soon the treads would be washed away, the troughs filled.

  Christopher decided to go when he saw the water coming in. Leaving his socks and pants at the back of the den with the blanket, he replaced his jeans and boots. His jumper was damp. He struggled into his coat, put his hand in the pocket, and was momentarily amazed to pull out a dry T-shirt. But then he remembered that it belonged to the Turncoat Louisa Smedley. After dipping it carefully in the brook, he balled the T-shirt up and hurled it across the water. It landed in the pooling water in the field. He looked down at his forearms, which had pink and white crosshatches from where he had scratched at the irritation.

  He took an elevated route through the pines. Clumps of grass and earth came away in his hands like scalps as he climbed. The light reflected in the puddles and the sheen of bark played tricks on him. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he thought he saw movement in one of the boggy areas a hundred yards away. It was as though the mud was taking a human form, and standing up. Christopher looked at his boots, willing the vision away.

  The funny thing about the woods, Christopher thought, as he arrived at the top of the hill amongst the swollen, naked trees, was that they were in you, as much as you were in them. Like that old saying about taking the boy out of the country, but not being able to whatever. And what was in you, was your woods, and once they took hold, it was pointless trying to find anywhere else.

  That didn’t mean the woods were always nice. Right now, the bare branches reminded him of the little vein things you see in biology diagrams of the lungs. Micro-villi. They were frightening when you thought of them like that: something turned inside out. A large drop of water ran off the end of a branch and went down his collar. Even from deep in the woods he could see the charred shape of the aviary out there in the fields.

  Up ahead, between the trees, he saw the back of a man covered in mud. It was hanging off him like rags. Christopher was too far away to see with any great accuracy, but he could certainly make out that the man had a quite glorious branch-like set of antlers. It definitely wasn’t the bus conductor. Christopher was not afraid; he wanted to know who the man was, and he tried to follow him, but the man was fast, and passed quickly out of sight.

  Christopher trudged on, thinking back to the episode of Robin of Sherwood he had watched with Maggie, featuring Cromm Cruac, that village of the dead. Little John had dreamed over and over and over of his wife’s murder. The outlaws had changed in his mind since then. They weren’t very merry at all. They were disturbed and sorry and sad, full of regret and loss. Christopher had read of the crusades recently, too. Times, he thought, had not been pleasant.

  He imagined the woods, crowded with the dead and gone: the last man to be hanged in Derby, who had sexual relations with a calf; the girl from his school who overdosed by her mother’s grave; the ewe he had found trapped in the brook; all of Louisa’s birds. That bloke who invented the Spinning Jenny.

  Christopher heard the angry, shuddering blades of a helicopter moving overhead. It was one of those yellow rescue choppers, probably carrying some old dear who’d fallen off her roof. Christopher pulled out his Peak Saver ticket, and looked at the little tear.

  If he imagined the dead inhabitants of the woods, and each of those individuals had imaginations of their o
wn, then the place would be absolutely teeming with the loved and lost. Teeming. He said it out loud, and the word seemed to summon the antlered man, who appeared, closer this time. Christopher could see the frayed fabric where the antlers had burst through the man’s hat.

  The antlered man started to run away again. ‘Wait,’ Christopher said, marching on. He hoped that the man (and all of the other dead folk) had not heard him singing ‘Hey Mona’ earlier that week. It was very much a work in progress.

  The diving platform looked like the champagne centrepiece of an ambassador’s reception, the steps so worn that the water flowed down them, one to the other. It was quite stunning. Christopher climbed the steps slowly, their rusted grids like grinning mouths.

  When he got to the top, Christopher saw the antlered man one last time, standing at the edge of the platform. He had his back to Christopher, and appeared to be looking out over Detton. ‘Erm, who do you think you are?’ Christopher said.

  The man did not answer. Christopher was tired. He tried to speak again, but the words sounded fragile. ‘Why won’t you turn around? I just, erm—’

  The man held up his hand to silence Christopher. ‘If I held you any closer,’ he said, and Christopher began to cry, because he knew what was coming. The man shook his head, and started again. ‘If I held you any closer, I would be on the other side of you.’

  Christopher got down on his hands and knees and began to shiver. When he looked up, the man was gone. Nothing was left of him but the spiralled, velvety casings of the antlers, bloody inside. Christopher crawled to the end of the platform, and looked over the edge, but there was no sign of the man.

  Should’ve known I’d get no answers from him, Christopher thought. Another one of his father’s sayings came to mind: Dead men tell no tales.

  Christopher wished they would. There were far too many missing pages. But maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe, if the true story of a man wasn’t known, if there was no historical evidence, then Christopher had just as much right as anyone else to make it up himself.

  When he looked down, his forearms seemed to be bleeding quite openly, the rainwater brightening the colour, washing it away as more came to replace it. It made him feel weak, but not unpleasant. Christopher tried to keep his eyes open. He continued to peer over the edge of the platform, watching the world gain weight.

  THIRTY-TWO

  The door to Louisa’s cottage was open, so Adam stepped inside. He could smell spilt whisky, wet mud, and the overpowering stench of several kilos of raw meat and defrosting mice and chicks.

  He found her upstairs in bed. Her lower leg hung out from the covers, thick all the way to the ankle. For a moment he felt sickened, as he sometimes did on visiting a client.

  Louisa was not asleep. She turned her head towards him. ‘What are you doing?’ she said.

  He stayed quiet because, in truth, he did not know.

  ‘When did it become okay for you to just walk into my house?’ she said.

  ‘I’ve quit,’ he said. ‘I’ve quit my job.’

  ‘At the golf course?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  She did not speak.

  ‘And I need your help for a bit,’ he said.

  ‘What could you possibly need me for?’

  ‘The lad. Christopher. He’s gone awol.’

  ‘No he hasn’t. He’s at his mother’s.’

  ‘He ran off from his mother’s,’ Adam said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He rang me.’

  He could see Louisa take a moment to process that information. The world was not as predictable as she would have it. ‘That’s nice,’ she said.

  He stared at her. She sat up in the bed, keeping the covers at her chin. ‘He’ll be back,’ she said. ‘How long’s he been gone? A day? It’s nothing. I’ve already had her ranting and raving. I don’t know what the fuss is about.’

  ‘He sounded weird on the phone. He takes them tablets, doesn’t he? And it’s waist high water in the village. I’m just going to drive around.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Yeah, of course. Why don’t you and her go and look for him together?’

  ‘What you on about?’ he said, feeling his temper begin to rise. He found her self-destruction childish. ‘I told you what happened. I didn’t do anything with her.’

  ‘Do you know what she said to me, today, at the door?’ Louisa said.

  ‘Do you know what you did? You dumped that kid.’

  ‘He fucking burned down my—’

  ‘He didn’t. He didn’t do it. Nobody did. It were an electrical fire,’ he said.

  ‘Rubbish. There was nothing wrong with my electrics.’

  ‘I spoke to the fire service. Wire and water, they said.’

  She looked away. He held out his hand. ‘Look. I know you’re torn up,’ he said.

  ‘You know nothing,’ she hissed. ‘All I ever asked was to be left alone. I gave my life to those hawks.’

  He saw his gym bag in the corner of the room, and retrieved it. He slung it over his shoulder, but then came back to sit on the bed. Louisa glared at him, but he did not move. ‘You said that one of them got out,’ he said.

  ‘Diamond. He’s long gone. I fed him up. He doesn’t need me any more.’

  ‘I thought you kept them beeper jobs on them. On their tails.’

  ‘I take them off every—’

  But she stopped, as if receiving a jolt. Adam watched her stroke the back of her own hand, acting out some strange ritual. ‘God,’ she said. ‘I didn’t. I didn’t take it off.’

  She rose from the bed, forgetting her nakedness for a moment before quickly pulling on pants and jeans and a green combat jumper. Adam stood too, nodding. ‘You’re going to come with me?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she said, picking up her keys and a torch.

  He followed her down the stairs. She pulled a clunky old telemetry transmission receiver from the closet, turned it on and started scrolling through the frequencies. The machine pipped. To Adam it looked as though Louisa had been resuscitated. ‘Less than sixty miles,’ she muttered. She pulled rope and leashes and her boots from the closet and put the transmission receiver into a bright orange rucksack, with the aerial coming out of the top.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said.

  ‘Going to find my hawk,’ she said.

  ‘You’re fucking joking.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she said, quick and active now, tying back her hair. ‘You and her go off and play happy families. The boy will be home in a bit anyway so make sure he doesn’t catch you at it.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Fuck you. All of you.’

  Adam moved in front of the door. Louisa put her hand beyond him onto the frame but he knocked it away forcefully. She held her wrist and looked up.

  ‘It’d be easier for you if I left, wouldn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘Right now, yes.’

  ‘You know what I mean. It would be easier for you if I walked away, so you could say, “Adam Gregory is weak. He abandoned me. If I ever saw him again, I’d kill him.” Same things you said about all those other folk you dumped. Because you fucking did fucking dump them. Christopher, me, her over the way.’

  ‘Listen,’ Louisa said.

  ‘No. You listen. I’m not giving in. I’m not having you slating me to some cunt in that pub when you know . . . when you know you made a mistake.’

  ‘I made a mistake?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, you. It’s easier to just fuck people off than to deal with it. Well. I’m not going.’ He threw his bag so that it skidded across the kitchen tiles. ‘I will look for that boy, and I will come back here. Because what happened between you and me on that first night was right. Fucking right. I haven’t felt like that since I was fifteen years old, and I haven’t felt like this ever. And I know you’ve got it, too. Tell me you haven’t.’

  She looked at his bag, crumpled in the corner like a squeeze-box. ‘Let me out,’ she said.

  ‘I’m going to l
ook for the lad. But whatever you do, you’re not fucking rid of me,’ he said, nodding at the bag. He turned and walked out, shutting the door behind him.

  The rain felt cool and pleasant coming down on the raised veins of his hands, and up through the soles of his trainers. Walking out to his car, he saw Maggie outside her house, loading the Land Rover and speaking into her mobile. He had not intended to go with her, but now it seemed logical. His car wouldn’t get through the water in the village, anyway. He crossed the field. She saw him and gave a preoccupied wave of acknowledgement. Then she realised who he was and finished her phone call.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘Hello. Can I help you?’ she said.

  ‘I was about ask you the same thing.’

  ‘My son is missing.’

  ‘Aye,’ Adam said. ‘I know.’

  Maggie narrowed her eyes, and then looked over at Louisa’s cottage. ‘I’m going out to look for him.’

  ‘I’d like to help,’ Adam said. The RAF helicopter made them both look up, imagining the worst.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Before beginning her search, Louisa sat in the darkened living room for a long time, listening to the measured pips from the transmission receiver, the red light flashing through the mesh of the orange rucksack. Her boy. Her diamond from the dust-heap.

  She had waited for the sound of the Golf’s engine, and when that was not forthcoming she had looked out of the window. Clearly, they had taken Maggie’s Land Rover. Her anger faded to regret. She had practically pushed him into crossing the field to Maggie’s house.

  Adam’s bag was one of those leather-look ones from the nineties, the top colour flaking away to reveal the yellowed sackcloth beneath. It was typical of him that he still had the bag he had taken to his school PE lessons, as though normal life had stopped in his teens. She picked it up, along with her own orange rucksack, and took them outside. The rain pinged off Adam’s car. It filled the drains on her roof, making the plastic creak beneath the weight. The familiar sound of rain against the mesh of the empty weatherings rang out – the regular dwellings of her birds were still perfectly untouched.